Vanceboro and “The Kid”

by Lyn Mikel Brown

In the thirties and forties, the only radio station local folks could pick up aired the Yankees games, so a good many baseball fans grew up rooting for Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Micky Mantle. Still, when Red Sox star Ted Williams started showing up with his fishing buddy, Bangor Daily News sports editor and outdoor columnist Bud Leavitt, people were excited to see him.

Vanceboro, where Spednic Lake feeds into the St. Croix River, is pretty much a perfect fishing spot, and Ted Williams loved to fish. He met Leavitt early in his career and together during the off-season they headed north. People from around town remember seeing Williams come and go. He’d stay at local camps, drop into Monk’s store for supplies, and take in an occasional fishing derby. Bill Kaine remembers when Red Sox pitcher Bill Monbouquette came up with Williams a few times and they stayed at the Hilltop Inn. Bill Smith and his friends would go up to the inn and watch them play catch. 

Williams had a camp in New Brunswick, up on the Miramichi River, and Jean Hogan recalls working the border when he came through in the early 1990’s. He was also a familiar figure in Grand Lake Stream, where he stayed at Weatherby’s and fished for landlocked salmon in both the lake and the stream.  

Williams had a few favorite guides while in town. Milton Lounder from McAdam would take him up lake to stay at Loafer’s Lodge. Elmo Wright, considered one of the best whitewater guides on the St. Croix, would take Williams down the river to Loon Bay.

If he was not fishing with lifelong pal, Leavitt, “the last of the 400 hitters” spent hours casting a line in solitude, no doubt enjoying time away from the limelight.

But in a baseball town like Vanceboro, it’s no surprise that every boy with a glove would do his damnedest to chance a meeting with Williams. Richard Monk tells of the time he and his brother skipped school to sneak up lake, only to receive a chilly reception. “The Kid” was on vacation and wanted nothing to do with them. Richard was so upset he went home and cut up all his Ted William’s baseball cards.

Richard might be happy to know that Williams, as they say, could get a little ugly. Jack Gartside, a noted fly-tier, remembered standing around the Fenway Park entrance as a boy, hoping to catch sight of arriving ballplayers. His friend who got there before him said, “You’ll never believe this, but Ted Williams talked to me before he talked to anyone else.”

“No kidding. What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Get out of my way, kid.'”

A ten-year-old Bill Brown remembers meeting Williams in 1961, the year the ballplayer retired. “I had a chance to meet him in St. Croix. He was in a fishing group with Bud Leavitt, his daughter, and others. They put in just on the other side of the trestle and canoed down to Loon Bay. I got up early, walked across the trestle and got his autograph before they put in.”

When he was sixteen, Gary Beers and a bunch of his friends “trekked through the woods to a camp (might have been Christensen’s) on the lake to see if we could meet him. When we got to the ridge overlooking, we saw his daughter Barbara (about 14 then) on the dock, casting a fly into what appeared to be an 18″ tube thing.. .. at about 40′. No teen-aged boy I’ve ever known would walk up to that. We slunk away quietly.”

Considered one of the greatest hitters of all time, Ted Williams was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. Also considered one of the greatest fly-fishers, he was inducted into the Fishing Hall of Fame in 2000. The latter is an accomplishment Vanceboro townspeople, guides, and sports camp owners can feel part of.